MikeSharp01

No particular standard for the window itself but they do have U values, so if doing a passive style house yiu have a U value to achieve and they need to meet building regs in all kinds of ways; air tightness, glass toughened where needed and escape provision.

Welcome to THE forum. Looking forward to hearing more.

Welcome to the Kent chapter of THE forum. We are building in Whitstable and I think we will be using Ali clad 3G from rationel I think but yet to confirm. Think @lizzie's point about making sure you get great installers is sound thinking. Mike

This is more interesting than I had thought as there must be heat loss if the first water out is at 50 deg C plus although it could be tiny if it can then heat water quickly which I guess must be a function of the internal arrangements of water pipework and the cells. If you think about it the nucleation will perhaps need to be controlled backwards down the pipework as the water starts to move through the lattice (if there is one) the early cells at the output end of the line will exhaust and start to be a drain on the heat from cells further back down the chain. So control becomes everything and there might, one supposes, be some internal gubbins that directs the flow across several pathways to reduce this effect which may also use flow rate to control. Will the patents not be viewable? Might give us a hint!

The 80-20 listen / speak rule is key. When we had ours the architect told me to keep quiet and let him do the talking which was sensible as we were paying him after all. In the end I only spoke about things that where beyond the architects scope or where he didn't have the answer. IE were we intending to live there (yes), what were are our plans for the footpath (offered to clear and resurface), would we be happy to have obscured glass in any East facing glazing (along the footpath so no problem).

Yes we have loads of these at home the kids took skiing and I suspect they all still work as I used one last year to great effect. I have not really looked at the underlying technology but heat loss once it is charged feels counterintuitive although the vac panels must have some function.

Does it loose anything if it's just standing waiting to be triggered or is there some background activity that has a price in heat loss?

Welcome to THE forum for self builders. Look forward to hearing more.

Is that upstairs? If so I would worry that the low frequency & high amplitude vibrations from all but a perfectly balanced load are going to get everywhere in the house. Has anybody done the upstairs laundry thing in a timber framed house and if so how did it go?

I have just had a builder move into a house 3 doors down, he and I get on well I think. I have encouraged him to join us on BH so he may already be earwigging. He is knocking down and starting again and is doing it - in my view, one of the right ways as he has employed an architect as a starting point. He seems to understand the Passive slab system and was concerned about how much of it I was doing myself but was happy to offer me a hand if ever I needed one, he is very neighborly in my view. So there are some out there who get it and his literacy is definitely not in question. You clearly can learn but the ceiling is very low because without a basic understanding of, as Ed for instance says, Physics and many other things your capacity to do other than work in a very narrow trench - pardon the pun, is limited. Sadly, as a nation, we have yet to work out that we need raise the floor on educating everyone, including engineers, architects, designers and managers in the construction industry. That way we can build better buildings using autonomous and free thinking - open minded practitioners who don't need to be driven to follow what they all to often think of as 'mad self builders' who, although playing the part of the early adopters of many of these innovations, want very good buildings with great energy credentials. Perhaps then, one day, all buildings will be like this or even better.

Or his relatives perhaps?

Welcome to THE self build forum. Hope you go for a passive class house as that will be almost sound proof which, given where you live, might be a blessing.

Its all about the temperature gradient across the layers and the spaces, if any, between the layers. Its a pain but there is a bit of software call wufi that will model it for you but your probably need to be an expert, I dabble but am no expert, to use it. I found that the company selling me the insulation would model it for me. I just sent them - can't recall who, the build up and they told me it would or would no work including the likely dew point opportunities given our weather.

Welcome to THE forum.

You probably only need, or rather one will only be valuable, an MVHR if you can make the building air tight so all the air is extracted and replaced via the MVHR. Plastering is good at creating air tight walls but you need to take this round to the windows, doors, boiler vents, services entry / exit points - essentially any holes in the building. Putting insulation on the inside has challenges as well because you need to ensure that no moisture in the form of condensation occurs where you get warm air at one temperature hitting colder surfaces at another, it is called dew point. There is loads out there on this to help and probably some robust detailing to allow you to see how this might be done. If you want to go all the way then there is a passive house standard for retrofit / refurb it is called the EnerPHit standard for energy consumption, insulation and air tightness. Not sure on the UFH questions although I would not have thought having it in the attic of a well insulated house would be worth it and we are not having it upstairs either rather relying on the main slab to warm the whole house through.

Yes you can buy it on rolls from any reputable wallpaper emporium.

Yes I will take some when I get to site in the next couple of days.

Two thoughts - Given your locale I might go and look at boat equipment with some brighter LEDS assiking you are going for a low voltage (24V ish) then they will have complete systems. On the other hand you could install a mains based system that steps down to cage a battery and is then inverted back up from the battery to run some 240V stuff.

I would go another way and buy a couple of small energy monitors and then turn the clamp sensors on/off with the rate switch relay.

Two things jump out at me really. First is the sitting room / WC ratio / layout. I would push the wall across and squeeze the WC and its anti room to make the sitting room a bit bigger a small WC could still be accessible to a disabled user and you will appreciate the space in the sitting room also here you have the WC on the opposite side of the room to that in the ensuite above it so making the foul pipe run more complex than it needs to be. Secondly I am not clear what the 1m gap behind the bed in the master bedroom is for.

Welcome to THE forum for self builders.

You couldn't wish for a more lovely site, although the water table will be quite high! Something a bit 'striking' will go in there well.

On the main question: We had almost the same set of possible 'designers' one RIBA - full architect and one passive house experienced RICS member designer. In the end the costs were very similar but we went for the Architect because we felt we would get a better design going that way because the RICS guy, wonderful portfolio, tended to be a bit restrained in their thinking. This may have been because we wanted a passive level house and the RICS had all the experience wile the Architect had very little which meant the RICS team would tend to start from Passive while the Architect went for design and then worked towards passive.

Welcome to THE forum for self builders, can you give us a hint as to where you are. Sounds like you are beside a Canal somewhere.

Exactly our experiance as well.